so you want to be an academic?

I've been wondering if I'm really 'cut-out' to be a proper academic. I spent the past Easter weekend vacillating between being repulsed by my clunky, unsophisticated and inelegant writing and getting excited about all the other article possibilities I could pursue. I couldn't help thinking, is this really what I want to do? The struggles I have with my writing really touch a raw nerve and expose the contradictory feelings inside me about being in academia. I accept that writing and publishing is central to what I have to do in this field, and I want to do it. I have things to say that I think are important and significant, and that I feel other people would be interested to hear/read about my thoughts and ideas. But another part of me just wants to be a teacher, a practitioner, a facilitator - focused only on giving students a better, more meaningful learning experience. But I think there is another issue central to the act of writing that overshadows these feelings about whether or not I want to be in academia. When the writing scholars, like Ivanic and co, talk about writing being intimately linked to identity and the self, they are absolutely correct. Nothing exposes my insecurities, self-doubts and uncertainties more than my writing - which is then amplified when my writing is viewed, judged and evaluated by others. Given that this judgment and evaluation is part and parcel of what defines academia, it appears, that if I don't accept the order of things, I will forever be in a state of internal conflict. So do I REALLY want to be an academic?

not teaching anymore

My teaching responsibilities have been 'revoked' - revoked isn't the write word, but I'm tired and don't feel like thinking about a word that might lessen the significance of this action or allow me to come across in a more polite, sensitive, considered tone. I won't go into the political motivations that brought on this decision or the fact that in this instance, I truly feel that I capitulated. I accepted my 'redeployment' (I word I used when explaining the new arrangements to my students) and breathed a sigh of relief for all the wrong reasons. Now when confronted with the reality I feel differently. I can't seem to ignore the symbolic resonances of this action. At the time I just wanted the problem and the stress to go away. Now I feel an amplification of the dissident position I embody. There is a hint of shame, again. Was it easier to say yes to not teaching, than deal with the fall-out of trying to confront the retrogressive and static approaches and attitudes to teaching and learning and student support? Teaching isn't a chore for me - it makes all the abstract theories I've studied for so many years, come to life. It challenges me to be critical about those very abstract theories that excite me when I read them, but are reconstructed differently in practice.

The point is, I'm disappointed and I wonder now, if I shouldn't have fought harder to retain a teaching role. Maybe I need to find other ways, other places to fulfill my teaching needs. Maybe! A residual feeling, a nagging thought at the back of my head keeps coming up though; Why do I continue to be the square peg trying to fit into a round hole. When will I find that freaking elusive square hole?

doing it all wrong

It's Friday evening, it's late. I'm sitting in bed with a fairly large'ish glass of red wine. It's been a both long and short week. This conflictory statement maybe, bests sums up the week's events. But, this isn't what's foremost on my mind or what this post is about. Amidst the crisis that unfolded on Monday was a little e-mail about the outcome of the peer review process linked to a little paper I submitted for a conference proceedings publication. In South Africa an academic can attract a smallish research subsidy for papers included in particular types of conference proceedings. Motivated by the possibility of attracting this subsidy and thereby accumulating some publication credits, I decided, in a carefree, happy moment, at the start of the year, to submit a paper. This was to lay the foundation for how I completely did it all the wrong way. On reading the peer-review reports, there was absolutely no way I could hide away from the fact that I had messed up the whole freaking process. Firstly, the paper was rushed. I'd be the first to admit that it was a difficult paper to write and a difficult one for the general audience of this conference to 'get' (even if I was able to write it exceptionally well). The amount of time I was able to spend on the paper was not commensurate with its level of difficulty. I remember I submitted the paper with probably one hour to spare before the final deadline. I just didn't give it enough time - I didn't allow the argument to brew (not the intellectual argument per se, but the written construction of that argument) and I didn't accommodate for more 'critical feedback' moments with a wider range of 'critical friends'. Secondly, I was messing with the stock-formula of paper submissions - I went for a conceptual rather than empirical argument. How arrogant and over-confident of me! Only the top scholars can and do take that this approach and even they encounter serious hurdles in getting this kind of paper published. Then finally, and this is probably the most crucial part, this submission attempt failed to take into account my own writing process - what I need to do get to a fairly polished piece of writing.

The feedback itself was brutal leaving me feeling ashamed that I submitted such a clearly unfinished, unrefined piece of writing. But, on Friday night with my glass of wine besides me, I feel sufficiently motivated, calm and accepting of this aspect being an academic, and I will give the paper another go. 'Good' writing comes with practice, I need the practice and the intellectual stimulation. Sometimes you have to get things wrong; if you don't how will you ever get them right?